JoustRL is a 7DRL 2020 Entry
Fly your mount up the pocket dimension volcano of floating islands, lava falls, and vicious beasts to capture the prize: A Golden Dragon Egg! Get back down to the teleport pad with the egg to escape with your prize.

Your mount will get tired, it can only flap its wings so many times before you will need to find an island to rest on and restore your flap count. Look up and down using the z/x keys and plan your ascent. Grey shadows will help inform you of what is above, as you ascend things below you will loose their background colour and fade to darkness.

Your mount will maintain its flight momentum so watch your speed if you need to be able to make quick turns. The movement is based on the 'line-racer' rules but special mounts have special modifiers! Try out all the different mounts to experience them for yourself.

The volcano is deadly, we are playing by arcade rules here: there is no hp and you and your mount are fragile. If you fly into or run on top of lava you will die. To kill an enemy your movement must end on the square they are on. The enemy has the same rule, to score a hit on you they must end their movement on your square. If you are hit you will die.

There are three enemies, they each have unique abilities and behaviour, try to work them out and use it to your advantage.

Wizard mode keys:
b: get the egg
n: refil flaps
m: warp to current z level

More information

Status	Released
Platforms	HTML5
Author	ibGoge

Comments

Eldar Bogdanov3 years ago

Hey there! Now that the shimmering issues are fixed, I went ahead and recorded a "Let's Play" vid for your game (linked below). Unfortunately, I ran into a situation where the game just hung, without responding to keyboard or mouse (36:25 mark). Also, you promised a mountable dragon after a win, but I did not find it :(

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago

This might be the most unusual game I've played in forever. It took me quite a while to figure out what I was looking at, but after understanding the way 3d space worked, I couldn't rest until I got the egg and escaped (final screenshot attached below).

For anyone who wants to give this a try but is as confused as I was for the first many minutes:

The action is happening in 3D space, and your screen is showing you a 2D section of this space on a specific altitude. You start on a platform at altitude 1, and need to climb up and find the dragon egg.
Every press of "z" button lets you look one altitude below, and every press of "x" button lets you look one altitude above.
If you flap twice in a row, you'll go higher, and if you don't flap twice in a row (actually I think one of the mounts can do it thrice), you'll go lower.
You want to plan your ascent/descent in a way that avoids lava fountains and doesn't crash you into walls. Because your mount has limited flaps, you have to "jump" from one island to another upwards.
Hovering over cells brings up their information in the bottom right view.
After getting the egg, descend all the way back to the center of the original platform to win.

I think the Dragon AI might be bugged and not being able to follow me through warped walls. Or is it on purpose? I also didn't figure out whether I can kill it - it seems kinda tedious to get the egg to experiment. Perhaps the wizard mode keys were exactly for this purpose?

ibGoge4 years ago(+1)

Congratulations!
Thank you very much for the informative gameplay explanation!
I am big dwarf fortress fan and the world view follows the same mechanics so I have wrongly assumed people will already be familiar the view mechanics as I am : (

Yea the dragon ai has trouble wrapping through the edges of the map because it will take the closest possible one of its choosable locations, and due to the dragons special movement style it will basically pivot on the spot and try to race back to you. The Dragon IS Killable, and you get a special shoutout in the end screen if you do kill the dragon and escape but it is pretty hard. If you escape with the egg you should now have the Dragon as a flyable mount! Once you fly the dragon you can see why it's so hard to kill, and what it would take to kill it.

Thanks very much for showing so much interest in this little experiment!

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago

Due to the old-school looking interface and humorous mount descriptions, I got kinda excited to play the game itself. Moreover, whatever shapes and forms were dropped upon me when the game started were so outlandish that I craved to figure out what the hell was going on even stronger. Sadly, it's practically impossible to play in my browser (Chrome 64-bit), as its frames keep shimmering (see the video below). Anything you can do about it? :(

ibGoge4 years ago

oh wow, thats not right... I've played and tested on Chrome 64 on a Mac and its been okay. Just tried Firefox and it also ran. But Safari is dead on load. Can you provide more details? Are you on a Windows or Linux machine? Have you tried fullscreen and windowed?
Thanks!

Eldar Bogdanov4 years ago

I'm actually on a Mac as well... OSX version 10.14. Chrome version 80.0.3987.132. I tried both fullscreen and windowed, same result. I tried Firefox just now and it still shimmers at the start and death screens, but doesn't during the game itself. Will give it another try :)